The 15 Greatest Moments from LOST… with Video!

With only one episode left until the finale of “LOST”, there’s been a lot of discussion about all of the questions which still remain and in all likelihood will most likely be left that way for all of eternity. Rather than dwelling on what we didn’t ever get from LOST, I’ve decided to go back and come up with a list of the all-time greatest LOST moments which kept us coming back every week.

In putting together the 15 Greatest Moments from LOST, my criteria were how much of an emotional and/or shocking punch did the particular moment have combined with a degree of memorability and how much each moment would shape the series moving forward. In my opinion, these are the best of the best…

15) Boom Goes the Dynamite (Exodus)

In the LOST Season 1 finale, Jack, Kate, Locke, Hurley and Arzt go to the Black Rock to bring back some dynamite to blow open the door to the hatch that they’ve found. It was a true jump out of your seat moment and much more unexpected than when the same thing happened to Ilana in Season 6. Hurley’s line “Dude, you got some Arzt on you” is one of the series remains one of the show’s most hilarious lines.

14) Mom of the Year, 1977 (The Variable)

In Season 5, our heroes are being thrown about through time, eventually landing in 1977. Physicist Daniel Faraday comes up with a plan to detonate a hydrogen bomb to alter the course of time and destroy the island. Of course to do this, he requires the help of the 1977 version of his Mother who had originally sent him to the island in the first place. A desperate Faraday tries to get the help of Richard Alpert, but ends up being shot in the back by his own mother. Faraday dies knowing that his own mother sent him to the island knowing that her younger self would kill him.

13) Jeremy Spoken (The Life & Death of Jeremy Bentham)

After John Locke left the island, he assumed the identity of “Jeremy Bentham” and tried to persuade the Oceanic Six to return with him to the island. After failing to do so and believing he must die to complete his mission, he attempts suicide, only to be interrupted by Ben Linus. After Ben talks him down off the ledge (or the table), Locke reveals the name of Eloise Hawking, which prompts Ben to then murder Locke himself.

To my knowledge, I don’t believe it’s ever been answered what the reason was for Ben to kill Locke after he hears the name of Eloise Hawking.

12) Adam & Eve Revealed (Across the Sea)

In the first season episode of LOST, “House of the Rising Sun”, Jack and Kate stumbled across two skeletons in a nearby cave whose identity was unknown… until now. We finally learned who the two bodies were after Jacob killed “The Man in Black” and buried his murdered mother along side him in the cave with the “backgammon” pieces. One of the shows great “Ah-Ha!” moments finally puts to bed one of the show’s many unanswered questions.

11) Two Girls, One Gun (Two for the Road)

In Season 2, the LOST heroes end up taking Ben Linus captive after he is found in one of Danielle Rousseau’s traps. Jack and Locke end up holding him for several episodes as a prisoner in the Hatch trying to determine whether he is one of “the others”. After Michael returns empty-handed in his search for the kidnapped Walt, he ends up in the Hatch alone with Ana Lucia where he ends up killing her and shooting Libby all in his efforts to set Ben Linus free. Then, to sell his story, Michael turns the gun on himself to make it look like he had shot in the process.

To this day, it’s still unclear about why Ben went to such great lengths and risks to have himself be intentionally captured by Rousseau and given to Oceanic 815 crew. It’s also unknown why Rousseau didn’t recognize the guy that stole her baby. Also, why didn’t Michael just have Ben shoot him?

10) The Hatch Implodes (Live Together, Die Alone)

All through season 2 of LOST, the Oceanic 815 crew must push a button every 108 minutes to prevent something bad from happening. When John Locke loses his faith, he decides that the button is just a joke and decides not to push it. Turns out he was wrong but ends up regaining his belief in his destiny.

Still unknown is exactly why the Hatch, built by the Dharma initiative, begins to show hieroglyphics, at the point that the 108 minutes runs out.

9) Who’s the Boss? (The Economist)

In Season 4, we got to see the Flash Forwards of the Oceanic 6 after they escaped off the Island. After leaving the island we see Sayid caught up in a world of intrigue working as a hired assassin trying to take out “The Economist”. After getting shot by a woman who works for “The Economist” whom Sayid was entangled with romantically, Sayid seeks medical attention from his former employer, Ben Linus.

To my knowledge, it’s never been revealed who “The Economist” was, who Sayid killed on the golf course or why exactly Ben Linus wanted either of them dead. Also, my unofficial count has Sayid being shot at a 50-cent like pace, 3 different times over 6 seasons.

8 )Not Penny’s Boat (Through the Looking Glass)

In Season 3, Desmond started seeing flashes of the future, and in these flashes he knew that Charlie was going to die. Desmond saw Charlie dying heroically after pushing a button which would allow Claire and Aaron to escape island on a helicopter. Charlie felt like he was in the clear, but he didn’t count on Mikhail with a grenade right outside his underwater window. After learning that the freighter doesn’t belong to Penny, Charlie finds a handy nearby sharpie and gives Desmond one final message.

Charlie might be upset to learn that Claire never left the island in a helicopter at any point, though Aaron did attempt to hitch a ride off the island in a chopper at the end of season 4… though that chopper runs out of gas and crashes into the ocean. However, the helicopter crash survivors were able to get into a life raft and eventually be rescued.

7) Sayid Shoots Ben (He’s Our You)

In Season 5, after being mistaken as an “other” by the Dharma initiative Sayid is being held prisoner. A young Ben Linus takes a liking to Sayid, believing he can help him runaway from his Dad. Once Ben gets Sayid out of the Dharma camp, Sayid decides to throw the whole space-time continuum out of whack and murder Ben as a kid.

6) Setting off the H-Bomb (The Incident)

In Season 5, the LOST heroes decide to go through with Daniel Faraday’s plan to detonate a Hydrogen Bomb in 1977 to prevent them from ever arriving on the island in 2004. To implement this plan, they’ll need to throw the H-bomb into the electromagnetic pit that will eventually become the hatch. After the bomb gets successfully thrown into the hole, it fails to go off and the electromagnetic forces continue to grow, eventually sucking Juliet down into the drill site. Juliet (somehow) is able to muster up a few good whacks with a nearby rock and ultimately detonates the bomb – creating an alternate timeline, sending our heroes back to the present and sending Juliet to “V”.

5) Keamy Kills Alex (The Shape of Things to Come)

In season 4, Charles Widmore’s freighter arrived on the island with the intention of apprehending Ben Linus. Once the freighter crew had Ben holed up in New Otherton, Widmore’s number one mercenary Keamy approached Ben holding Ben’s daughter Alex hostage. Ben tried to convince Keamy that he didn’t care whether he shot Alex but it was a rare strategic miscalculation for Ben.

4) Desmond Phones Home (The Constant)

In Season 4, Desmond begins to lose it as his consciousness is travelling between the present and his life in 1996. With the help of Daniel Faraday, Desmond realizes he needs to focus in on his “constant”, Penny. On the freighter, Sayid is able to connect the satellite phone, which allows Desmond to dial out and connect with Penny once again in one of the show’s most emotional moments. The fact that it was Christmas Eve made the scene even more touching.

3) The Submarine Time Bomb (The Candidate)

In Season 6, The Smoke Monster tells the remaining Oceanic 815 Survivors that they are going to steal Widmore’s submarine to all escape together, but Sawyer has another plan to escape without Smokey. Once aboard the sub, the Oceanic 815 crew quickly realize that they played right into’s Smokey’s hand. When they discover a time bomb planted in their backpack, Jack takes the ultimate leap of faith and concludes that they will all be safe if they just trust him. Sawyer confesses that he can’t and attempts to disarm the bomb resulting in the deaths of Sayid, Lipidus, Jin and Sun. While the deaths of Jin and Sun were emotional too, I chose this particular moment as when Jack officially completed his transformation from a man of science to a man of faith.

As much as I love this scene, I still don’t quite understand how Sawyer pulling the wires out of the bomb was any different than Jack lighting a stick of dynamite on board the Black Rock. According to Jack on the Black Rock, he said they couldn’t kill themselves, but on board the sub, that somehow morphed to Smokey can’t kill them but they could kill each other.

2) Locke’s Wheelchair Reveal (Walkabout)

In the beginning, we thought that LOST was just a show about the Survivors of a plane crash. We slowly began to learn about polar bears and smoke monsters but there was no greater reveal about the powers of the island than the moment we learned that John Locke was confined to a wheelchair before the plane crash. More than just a great LOST moment, I believe this is one of the greatest television reveals of all-time.

1) The Original Flash Forward (Through the Looking Glass)

The season 3 finale of LOST was intercut with flashes to Jack’s life off the island which we were led to believe were before the Oceanic 815 flight crashed on the island. In the episode’s final scene we learn the depressed, alcoholic, bearded Jack is actually Jack AFTER he leaves the island. In addition to being an incredibly shocking reveal, it was the series ultimate game-changing moment which set the course for where the story would ultimately go in it’s final three seasons – and thus my number one LOST moment of all time.

However, the Flash Forward is not without it’s unresolved questions, specifically why does Jack tell the chief of surgery at the hospital to get his father “down here” and if Jack is more drunk than his father is, then Jack should be fired. Maybe this is just the best evidence of how messed up on drugs Jack might actually be.

There’s my list, let me know how you think I did and what you think I missed in the comments below or connect with me directly on twitter: @robcesternino

For more about LOST, check out my weekly LOST podcasts from the final season of LOST.